ELLENVILLE, N.Y. -- Village trustees on Monday agreed to ask state and federal officials for strong laws governing use, ownership, and storage of firearms. Trustees continued to draw the ire of gun owners who consider sections of the request to be an infringement of Constitutional rights.

The concerns were raised during a Village Board meeting that attracted 28 people, with about a dozen speakers upset that officials were asking for stronger restrictions on gun owners.

Among board recommendations that brought agreement from the audience was one that stronger penalties be implemented for crimes committed with weapons.

"The only way you're going to fight these incidents of violence is to be firm with them and not coddle them," said Dr. Richard Craft, a Wawarsing resident and retired state hunting trainer.

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"I don't know what it cost to house an inmate in a prison ... for year's time," he said. "But if they had facing them an automatic sentence of 25 years to life I guarantee you that there wouldn't be the problem we've got in the country today."

Village resident Mark Sahler said there was a low level of trust in the recommendations because Mayor Jeff Kaplan previously sought to have gun ownership banned in the village. Sahler added it was the same type of concern that was expressed by residents in 1776.

"The Second Amendment was put there because we just got done fighting the British because they were a tyrannical government," he said.

"We have our firearms to protect us in case the government gets out of hand just like the British government did," Sahler said. "To put restrictions on us to say 'well you can have this and you can't have that' depending on which way the wind blows, it's not right and it's not due process."

Trustees in the letter asked state officials to provide more funding for mental health treatment programs, establish a program that would put a police officer in every school, develop "more stringent and rigorous" certification requirements to own firearms, establish stronger penalties for illegal possession of a firearm, ban weapons with high capacity clips, and develop stronger storage requirements.

Kaplan agreed to drop a request for new firearms to be manufactured with technology that would limit use to its owner and authorized users.

"At the end of the day I can see where the gun owners, who often times are not wealthy people, are going to really be incensed by you're taking away guns based upon their economic strata," he said.

"That's what's going to happen if you make guns too expensive by putting too much technology in it," Kaplan said.

Kaplan said concern over access can be addressed by making access to weapons more difficult for unauthorized users.

Kaplan said the comments from audience members were helpful in making some changes to the recommendations and that strong sentiment that appeared to be anger from speakers was expected.

"Democracy is messy but at the end of the day if you can get something accomplished, it really is worth the effort," he said.